Garuth returned to his desk and sat down again. “We asked ourselves that, but we don’t think it’s the case,” he answered. “You see, there’s a distinct category of Jevlenese that the infection seems to spread from. They account for practically all of the cult founders and the agitators. All the trouble seems to emanate from them.”
“You mean like the one all these purple people have been getting into a frenzy over since yesterday?” Hunt interjected. “What was he called, Ayatollah, or something?”
“Ayultha,” Shilohin supplied.
“Oh, yes.”
“There’s something very unusual about them,” Garuth said. “Something that can’t be explained as simply an extreme of some general human characteristic. There’s too much of a pattern, too much that’s systematic for it to be coincidental aberration.”
ZORAC interrupted. “Excuse me. I have a call for Professor Danehekker.”
Danchekker’s pencil broke, and the color drained visibly from his face.
“Who is it, ZORAC?” Hunt asked.
“Sandy, from the UNSA labs.”
“Put her through.”
“Oh, sorry to interrupt, but we’re wondering where to put your personal things, Professor,” Sandy’s voice said cheerfully. “Do you want to be out in the lab? Or I thought maybe one of the smaller offices would be better for privacy.”
Danchekker nodded rapidly and licked his lips. “Yes… yes, that would be preferable, thank you,” he agreed in a shaky voice.
“Okay.”
“Hold any more non urgent calls until we’re through, ZORAC,” Garuth instructed.
Hunt looked back at Garuth. “You were saying that there’s too much of a pattern to these ayatollahs,” he said.
Garuth nodded. “For one thing, they’re all very unscientific. Chronically unscientific. I don’t mean simply low in aptitude; they lack the basic conceptual machinery that makes any rational account of an objective world possible. They don’t seem to share the ordinary, commonsense notions of causality and consistency that you have to have, even to begin understanding the universe. You’d almost think they weren’t from this universe at all.”
“Can you give some instances?” Hunt asked.
“Fundamental things-things that any six-year-old wouldn’t think twice about,” Garuth answered. “We take it for granted, for example, that objects remain unaltered by changes in location or orientation; that things measure the same in the evening as they do in the morning; that the same causes always produce the same results. Children grasp such fundamentals naturally. But the-what did you call them?”
“Ayatollahs,” Hunt said. He shrugged at Danchekker. “Sounds like a good name for them, to me.”
“They don’t seem to see anything natural about predictability at all,” Garuth went on. “They act as if it were mysterious. Machines baffle them.”
“They talk instead about magic and mysticism,” Shilohin said.
Garuth made a gesture of incomprehension. “They believe it,” he said. “As if that was how their perceptions of reality had been conditioned. Hence my question: We know who performed the conjuring tricks that spread such beliefs on Earth. But who did it to the Jevlenese?”
Danchekker stared at him. “I have no idea. Have you?”
Garuth waited for a moment, then nodded. “Possibly. We think it could have something to do with JEVEX. But we’re not sure exactly how.”
“JEVEX evolved under the same influences that plotted to overthrow Thurien and Earth,” Shilohin pointed out. “Conceivably the qualities of its creators were somehow embodied into its nature-and the ayatollahs are frequently violent and excitable. They are suspicious of everyone, and pathologically insecure, hence their obsessive urge to control others and impose their will-what else do these cults of theirs express? The insecurity also manifests itself as an insatiable lust for wealth, on a scale beyond the comprehension of normal people.”
“Hm, we’ve seen more than a few like that back on Earth,” Hunt remarked. He was thinking of a ring that had been broken up after the Pseudowar and its revelations. Maybe Earth held more undercover Jevlenese than had been realized.
“A completely circular argument,” Danchekker objected. “You begin by postulating JEVEX as the cause, then conclude by deducing Jevlenese origins as a consequence. A simple observation of the commonality of human nature to both situations would be far more to the point, would it not?”
“Maybe,” Hunt conceded.
Garuth was not so sure. “There is other evidence of a distinct, external cause at work: the suddenness with which the ayatollahs are affected. The condition doesn’t seem to be present from birth, or something that develops progressively through life. It appears suddenly, as if the victims were being possessed.”
“At a similar point in their lives?” Hunt queried.
“No. It can happen at any age.”
“There are practically no records of childhood cases, though,” Shilohin mentioned.
“Yes, that’s correct.”
Hunt reflected for several seconds. “What kind of evidence is there for these ‘possessions’?” he asked finally. “Is it just anecdotal, or what?”
“It’s an acknowledged fact among the Jevlenese, occurring as far back as records go,” Garuth said. “Shilohin has conducted a study of their history.”
Shilohin took up the details. “A number of common themes reappear continually beneath the superficial differences of what the various cults preach. They go back a long way, and cut across boundaries of nation, race, creed, geographic area and historical age. One of them is this notion we’ve already mentioned of persons being suddenly ‘possessed,’ somehow. It’s always in the same kind of way: they usually switch to a new life-style; their value system and their conceptual world model change; and they lose rationality.”
“So it’s not as if they never had it,” Hunt said.
“Exactly. And it isn’t only we who see the difference. All the native Jevlenese languages have terms that set them apart as a class- usually translating as ‘Emerged’ or ‘Arisen,’ or something vaguely synonymous. They talk about having ‘escaped’ from an ‘inner world,’ or something recognizably similar.”
When Shilohin had finished, Danchekker twiddled the pen that Hunt had handed him between his fingers and stared down at his notes in silence for a while. Finally, he exhaled heavily and shook his head. “I still think you’re reading meaning where none exists,” he said. “Essentially the same concepts are also encountered widely on Earth. The most economic answer is that they are merely simplistic expressions of the hopes, fears, and doubts that underlie the workings of primitive mentalities anywhere. No unifying explanation of the kind you are seeking is called for.”
“ZORAC, what’s your evaluation?” Garuth asked.
“Logically, the professor is correct. But past experience says Vic’s hunches are the way to bet.”
“Then let me throw one more thing at you, Professor,” Garuth said. “The pattern doesn’t extend back to the earliest stages of the Jevlenese past. There was no hint of it in Lunarian history. And the descendants of the Lambian survivors brought from Minerva didn’t show it until long after they established themselves on Jevlen.”
Shilohin completed the point for him. “It was only after JEVEX had been up and running for some time that the first ayatollahs appeared, spreading notions of mysticism and magic. Before then, nothing of the kind had been heard of. In fact, that was where the Jevlenese got their idea for sabotaging Earth. That’s why we think that JEVEX was the culprit, somehow. And it could also explain why all of the cults, regardless of their superficial bickerings and hair-splittings, are united in calling for JEVEX to be restored.”